Land levelers, when used as snowplow tools, may have the following features: being widely applicable, requiring relatively low working space, having relatively high working speed, having relatively strong adaptability. However, the snow plowing efficiency of a land leveler is lower than the snow plowing efficiency of a professional snowplow. A large professional snowplow is often expensive and is left unused for a long period of time during a year. Owning a professional snowplow can cause a waste of resources.
In recent years, land levelers are used more and more to remove snow. In some applications, a professional snow plowing device is used with a land leveler to remove snow. In some other applications, the blade of a snowplow is used directly to remove snow. Currently, various different snow plowing devices can be mounted on land levelers to remove snow. A snow plowing device may have a bar shape or a “V” shape. For example, a Chinese patent with the publication number CN103061299A discloses that, a snow plowing device is mounted on the front rack of a land leveler. As a result, a large overlapping area is formed between the snow-removing region and the blade. The actual plowing width of the land leveler is not expanded.
When removing accumulated snow, it is desired that the distance between the blade and the road surface is sufficiently close to ensure snow is properly removed. However, hard protrusions, e.g., cracking areas on the road surface, and protruded areas formed after road repair, can exist on the road surface, and those hard protrusions can cause significant damages to the blades. Such snow plowing method can also cause significant damages to the road surface.
It has been well known that, land levelers are mainly driven by a rear-wheel drive system. Because a land leveler often has a long body, 70% of its total weight is applied on the rear wheels of the land leveler. Such structure, which is light on the front portion and heavy on the rear portion of the body, can enable the land leveler to be more stable on wet roads. If a snow plowing device is mounted at the front portion of the land leveler, the center of gravity of the land leveler can shift closer to the front portion of the land leveler. Because of the wet icy roads, the land leveler is more susceptible to skidding and being unstable. Further, the snow plowing device mounted at the front portion of a land leveler may also block the driver's field of view.